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Obama To Reverse Bush Limits On Stem Cell Work
An anonymous reader sends this quote from the Associated Press:
"Reversing an eight-year-old limit on potentially life-saving science, President Barack Obama plans to lift restrictions Monday on taxpayer-funded research using embryonic stem cells. ... Under President George W. Bush, taxpayer money for that research was limited to a small number of stem cell lines that were created before Aug. 9, 2001, lines that in many cases had some drawbacks that limited their potential usability. But hundreds more of such lines — groups of cells that can continue to propagate in lab dishes — have been created since then, ones that scientists say are healthier, better suited to creating treatments for people rather than doing basic laboratory science. Work didn't stop. Indeed, it advanced enough that this summer, the private Geron Corp. will begin the world's first study of a treatment using human embryonic stem cells, in people who recently suffered a spinal cord injury. Nor does Obama's change fund creation of new lines. But it means that scientists who until now have had to rely on private donations to work with these newer stem cell lines can apply for government money for the research, just like they do for studies of gene therapy or other treatment approaches."
Anti-abortionists are going to have a field day with this. If stem cells can be harvested from aborted fetuses, and stem cells actually fulfill their promise as everyone expects they will, then getting an abortion suddenly becomes not so much the destruction of one life but the preservation of many.
If Star Trek has taught me anything, it's that neither "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one" nor "the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many" provide a solid foundation to base morality upon. It's sad that babies have to die to save lives, and it's sad that lives have to be sacrificed because of unwillingness to kill a baby. However, this dilemma can't be resolved at this level. But this latest policy move certainly gives some ammunition to one side.
Except your both idiots because stem cells came from nonviable sources that would have been destroyed no matter what to begin with like fertility treatment leftovers and umbilical cords.
Inconvenient how those facts get in the way of righteous anger isn't it?
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Given the deep moral objection a significant part of the community has to the use of embryonic stem cells, and given that it looks like there have been large advances in the use of adult and other stem cells, why lift the funding ban? I mean, all other things being equal, wouldn't it be better to not wander into a moral gray area?
As I understand it, one of the major points of the ban was to discourage the field from becoming reliant on stem cells that required further destruction of embryos. I might be wrong, but from my understanding great leaps have been doing just that - that adult and other non-destructive forms of stem cell research have been fruitful. If that's the case, I don't understand the point of lifting the ban other than for purely political purposes.
I honestly don't understand how the "destruction of embryos" for medical research is worse than the "destruction of embryos" for IVF. The only difference I can see is that IVF is a procedure that conservatives have done all the time, while medical research is done by the evil liberal scientists.
All this hand-waving over stem cells strikes me as dishonest. The people who call killing embryos for research a tragedy have no problem letting them die en masse in other circumstances. For example, why aren't they pushing for medical technology to save every last fertilized ovum? I guess life isn't as important as scoring political points.
The difference is between taking part in evil (destroyed embryos due to fertility treatments) versus having no part in it. There are some things that the government should have nothing to do with.
You mean when the Republicans were crying about one-sided reporting, or reporting of biased, half-truths, they were actually correct?!
Bush's PR department sucked.
Chicken and egg problem, we know so little about stem cells that I do not know whether it is possible to make stem cells available by another route. If we discover that it is possible to remove this method of acquiring cells for research then the method can be stopped at a later date removing the religious objection.
On another front it is clear that religious intervention in science has severely limited the progress of some societies on Earth. Religion does change its interpretation of what the fundamental rules of living should be as societies change and science provides more accurate knowledge about the world but it often takes many lifetimes for this adjustment to occur.
All societies are facing severe threats from the overpopulation of the world, resource shortages, climate change and poverty. Scientific progress is the only source of solutions to these problems unless we are prepared to allow the problems to multiply to the point where a dramatic population crash occurs. We are at a crossroads, the choice is in our hands, use our creativity and intelligence to take charge of our own destiny or allow our environment to expell us. 2000 year old books prefer the second solution, by default they select the lemmings fate of allowing the environment to kill us off.
Pick you side, I know which one I find more human.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Nice attempt but aside from the non-embryo sources of embryonic cells you're also arguing for respecting one establishment of religion's views over the rest, arguing that both fertility treatments and deriving benefit from what would otherwise be wasted is evil, AND inconsistently with your OWN logic arguing that it's also evil to try to derive some good from something you consider evil and thus work against the evilness of it.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Not even a dozen posts in we already have shitheads bemoaning that 'babies die' when these cells are harvested.
1. According to the Department of Bioethics, anywhere between sixty to eighty percent of fertilized eggs fail to attach to the uterus naturally.
2. Though a precursor to a fully formed human being, these little balls of cells have neither brains nor senses. They have no qualia, no conscious phenomena. They are at most minuscule fragments of tissue - kind of like the smears most of you leave on the sheets at night.
3. If the cells that precede the formation of a human being that will never grow to become even a fetus, much less a fully formed infant, can be used to save lives that exist today, why not? A human that will never be is effectively dead.
4. All of these things can be taken into consideration without devaluing conscious human life, because conscious human life this is not.
We're not giving permission to Anton LaVey to tear the fetuses of misbegotten children from the rancid wombs of unwed women of color while Marilyn Manson and 50 Cent plays over the back alley abortion clinic's P.A. system, you stupid fucking hicks. If you believe that human life begins 'when the sperm hits the germ' then every mother that has attempted to get pregnant and failed repeatedly could very probably be guilty of negligent homicide because of point number one.
And besides, we can get plenty of cells from elsewhere so the debate is now largely moot save for those few situations where adult cells may not suffice.
Currently unproven to save even one life, but proven to destroy human embryos.
Fortunately, they're a renewable resource.
The difference is between taking part in evil (destroyed embryos due to fertility treatments) versus having no part in it. There are some things that the government should have nothing to do with.
This is the government having nothing to do with it. Now decisions on what research is needed and is ethical will be taken by ethics committees and funding bodies and not by politicians who don't understand either the ethics or the science and are trying to grab votes. Its really impossible to argue for or against embryonic stem cell research as a whole - each piece of research should be judged on its own merits by the right people. Blanket bans are wrong.
But it means that scientists who until now have had to rely on private donations to work with these newer stem cell lines can apply for government money for the research,
Because the State of California is giving out private donations?
I was kind of pissed at Bush for blocking federal funding on new lines until I really thought about it for awhile. There's nothing that precludes researchers from doing research on new lines.
If people wanted this so bad, what prevented them from pulling out their checkbooks? Hello, there, Silicon Valley. There's lots of rich people there. How about a donation? You, too, Hollywood, if this is such a big issue.
As to why Obama's doing it, well, two reasons. First, it satisfies a niche constituency, who like to see abortion-related topics pressed to the forefront at every opportunity. Second, his tax plan does probably kill off the possibility of private funding.
(I'm pro-choice, BTW. But to look past Obama's shallow political motives, and to ignore the reality of the situation while Bush was president is very foolish.)
The whole controversy over the "life beings at conception" is completely religious, and affects only the Abrahamic faiths. In Asia and other parts of the world it is a non-issue.
I wish you would apply your moral panic to causes that could actually help people.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
"Tell the date when stem cell research will cure..."
The day pissants without a clue stop bitching about funding science.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The whole fact that life begins at conception is biological/scientific. Granting of "personhood" is a legal distinction that has no basis in science. If it were, then African Americans (or anyone else with black skin) would never have been enslaved, and women would have always had a vote. The fact is, science shows that the child is a distinct lifeform from its mother from the moment of conception, and the law has chosen to ignore that until the child is completely removed from the womb.
As long as we get our terminology right ("life" vs "personhood"), there is no dispute.
There are some things that the government should have nothing to do with.
Exactly!
I could not have stated it better. Let's name a few:
The list continues. Keep in mind that the proper role of government (and spending of taxpayer money) doesn't change because some special interest group favors something over another interest group. It shouldn't matter that I'm a geek as opposed to an actor or a medical doctor or anyone else to decide if it's okay for the government to fund a project.
Special projects should be funded privately - just like what happened for stem cell funding during the Bush terms of office. It's hardly a moral question but a question of what the role of government is.
But can't you see that entire industries, agendas, and personal freedom from responsibility hinge on the idea that life and non-life are decided by location? It's scientific and everything!
The idea that "life" could possibly exist in direct conflict with the desires of a selfish person is preposterous!
"I know that every word that man just said is true, because it's EXACTLY what I wanted to hear." -- Space Ghost
Let me give you an historical analogy:
But I'll ask you this. If you think I'm wrong, then please tell me how. Tell the date when the Maxwell's equations will give any useful results. Tell me when the Maxwell equations will give us public lighting, electric cars, computers. What's the date that's going to happen by? Just give me a date that you can guarantee success by.
See how stupid that sounded? Nevertheless, it was indeed quite a long time before the unification of electromagnetism by Maxwell gave any practical results. So, just because you don't have any use for them in the near future, don't mean that they are worthless.
This is basic science. People trying to understand the processes of life. Cell differentiation, growth, ageing. It can have implications in almost any field of biology. So don't try to tell what is useful science and what isn't until you have some scientific training.
entropy happens
I don't really care to wade into the abortion-debate muck, particularly as abortion has nothing to do with the stem cells we're talking about. Those are obtained from fertility clinics, and created by people who are SO "pro-life" that they leave plenty of discarded excess life behind in the freezer.
However, what frustrates me to a greater degree is this myth that stem cell research has been "restricted". 90+ percent of people on the street (and probably even a majority of Slashdot posters here) mistakenly believe that the evil Bush administration "banned" or "outlawed" stem cell research. That's simply not true. The last administration refused to SUBSIDIZE it, and that's all. Researchers have been under no restriction whatsoever to do any of this research, as long as they're not sucking off the taxpayer teat for their funds.
This opens up an entirely separate debate on private sources of medical research funds, and why pharmaceutical companies now pay more in marketing than they do in R&D. I'll leave that debate to others. However, are we REALLY so drunk on "stimulus" spending for everything under the sun these days, that refusing to subsidize a particular item means that item is actively "restricted"?
Bush's PR department was awesome. You just need to catch up with the times.
The trick is to cry that everyone's out to get you, and that they only report things in a one-sided manner, but then to make sure that your side is the only one reported. Remember when the Democrats were blocking things in Congress under his administration? How was that possible with a Republican majority?
Bush effectively killed an entire branch of developmental science in the US. Labs shut down and people lost their jobs. Labs brave enough to continue on had to do so out of their own pocket. If it wasn't an aberration that fertility clinics make a ton of money from people willing to pay anything to have a child, no research on stem cells would have ever occurred in the United States.
So now we're almost ten years behind the rest of the world in discovering treatments with what amounts to a silver bullet that can actually replace dying tissues. That means that in the future, you'll have to import the treatments from other countries or fly there for treatment. Due to religion, America loses yet another manufacturing opportunity.
Did he plan it this way? I don't think so, I think he's just a good church-going guy who is willing to watch Science go to Hell because he believes the arguments that Scientists don't like Jesus.
Bush's PR only took a dive when the facts got so out-of-hand that he couldn't cover them up with more Fox News.
How do you even dare to call them "pro-lifers"? They are murderers guilty of effectively killing anyone who could be saved by methods derived from this kind of research. Stopping fertility clinics isn't "pro-life" either, it's about nothing but banning person A from doing things disliked by person B's religion.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Of course it's scientific and not religious, and intelligent design is too.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
So what you're saying is that I made a polite argument that you didn't like. And this qualifies for trolling nowadays.
"I know that every word that man just said is true, because it's EXACTLY what I wanted to hear." -- Space Ghost
no you made a politely worded argument that, while politely worded, is nonetheless patronising and demeaning.
Ad hominem doesn't necessarily mean blunt.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
So because I don't agree with what you're saying, I'm just supposed to be quiet or risk being called a troll?
The fact is that I do believe what you're talking about is wrongheaded for the reasons given (and more). I'm not going to praise it when I'm arguing against it, and I'm under no obligation to praise people with whom I disagree. I believe that I am under an obligation to be polite about it, which is more than I can say about most libs nowadays.
The fact is that I do believe you and many others are deceived by the MSM. You said it was you and the MSM were deceived, but you were really only half right.
"I know that every word that man just said is true, because it's EXACTLY what I wanted to hear." -- Space Ghost
Actually the true definition of government having nothing to do with this is for it hand out no money at all. But maybe we have different definitions of "nothing."
Kind of like how you're aborting a child by allowing a woman to have her period and not impregnating her first?
I wish you would apply your moral panic to causes that could actually help people.
This. I don't get the outrage of stem cells for this reason. I can understand how religious people can feel harvesting embryos or whatever is wrong. But if it's wrong, it's a wrong done with at least good intentions, that harms no one (abortions are not going to stop, stem cell research or not). There's so much going on thats wrong in this world, even in this country. Ethnic cleansing, human rights abuses, etc. In our country alone, the government steals from the poor and gives to the rich, imprisons millions for drugs and puts them in a prison system that is completely overrun with racism, violence, drugs, sexual abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases. For a religon based on teachings of tolerance, love for your enemy, forgiveness, and redemption, you would think the state of our for-profit-prisons would have the "religious right" outraged! Somehow I think Christ would be more concerned about helping those on the very bottom of our society, then condemning Doctors bending their ethics to potentially help make the lame walk again (in fact I hear he was a big fan of healing cripples).
It seems to me you could easily spend your entire life fighting whats wrong in this world, and never even get around to stem cells. It's a small, pathetic issue to crusade against. But I suppose because it is small, it is easy to divert your attention to, easy to cope with. After all, the big issues would require you to look with open eyes, and maybe admit you were wrong. That would take humility, and I'm pretty sure Jesus was strongly against that, if the leaders of the religious right are any example.
My first and greatest complaint against the Bush administration is that it made scientific views a matter of state policy and politics rather than an evidence based process. Of necessity this includes decisions made as to what the course of scientific investigations should be.
THIS IS UNTENABLE POLICY. This is the 21st century where in fact the future progress of the human race depends solely on accurate science. To have politics rather than evidence guide this is flat out 100% unacceptable.
The intrusion of policies of this nature controlling the dispersal of government funds for research and development is a breaking of the requirement that decisions of government be made in a way that aides, not hinders the governed. It is no different in principle than any other corruption of the process of government; it is a matter of religious lobbyists and campaign contributors influencing policy in a manner that is detrimental to the nation and world.
People howl about the oil lobby extracting favorable treatment.
This is FAR worse.
Considering the problems most people face after birth, shouldn't abortion be considered an act of humanity?
Life continues at conception.
http://sourcemage.org/ - Have fun
Actually, according to biology, no new life is created at conception, all current life has began exactly once about 3.5 billion years ago, and we are all part of an uninterrupted lineage.
Deus est fatalis
Define "failure". In fact, define "Obama's plan". He's got a dozen of them going right now.
The economic stimulus plan? He's taking criticism from both sides. For every expert you can dredge up to say that it will make things worse, I can find you a critic whose primary problem is that the plan is too small to cover the gap between the economy's current output and its potential output.
The bank bailout plan? Obama has a lot to be criticized for here, but A) it's a really thorny and complex problem, and B) most of the "experts" agree that doing nothing would have been ruinous, and C) a lot of the criticism is demanding emergency nationalization, not half-measures. The government should jump in, declare many of the biggest banks insolvent, wipe out the shareholders, and run the banks until they can find private investors.
By "the majority of indicators," you actually mean "the stock market." The stock market is a lousy proxy for the economic confidence of the country for a variety of reasons. Its view is too narrow, because half the stocks in this country are owned by the wealthiest 1% of Americans, because a rising DJIA only tells you how a relative handful of entrenched companies are doing, and because things that are good for the economy as a whole can be really bad for individual stocks.
For example, the only reason the stocks of some of the banks are still trading above zero: investors believe that Obama will probably keep the government bailout money trickling in, rather than swooping in and wiping out the current investors. I believe that the latter plan would be far better for the economy as a whole, but it would be bad for at least that sector of the stock market.
Also, as a commenter on the previous link pointed out, the stock market dropped 24% after Reagan took office, not because investors were made nervous by Reagan's free market talk, but because there were real problems that needed to be sorted out before growth would resume. Pretending that the stock market is a proxy for America's actual confidence in Obama's policies (forget the 62% approval rating) is a bald-faced lie that you Right-wingers will drop like a plague-ridden dead cat as soon as the market starts recovering.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
The term "abortion" already has a meaning, actually, and this is an attempt to confuse what is actually happening with that meaning.
You should pick a different term, though it's quite clear why you choose not to.
I hope you're just kidding, but if not: The biggest profit you are going to make is on the product that brings the most relief to the most people because that is the biggest market. Suppose there are three diseases: Disease A that affects 10 million, Disease B that affects 1 million, and Disease C that affects 1000. The free market would promote research spending on Disease A but politics might promote research spending on whatever aliments that swing voters have or sympathize with.